Continuing my travel through the order of the mass, after the Eucharistic prayer comes another rich moment, “the Lord’s prayer”. I love this gorgeous and honest version from New Zealand. But I want to grapple myself with my own meditation with “the prayer Jesus taught us”. Travel my thoughts with me if you like.

I remember as a child, a reoccurring theme was how dangerous “the Lord’s prayer” was. Dangerous because it was so familiar, we could say it without really meditating on what it meant, simply as empty words and that would be sinful, negate the power of praying at all or even be blasphemous. Nevertheless that was a “given” prayer that was supposed to be superior to other prayers so we had to always say it- at church, at home, in the rosary, in our own prayers as a family or as individuals.

I remember much more recently at work, debating with some colleagues the merits or otherwise of insisting that children apologise when they have done something to someone. “Sorry is an empty word” one of my colleagues said, positively AGAINST children being taught to say it when harm has been done. In a way she was right of course, the “sorry” of our nation toward Indigenous people has not completely achieved the change of heart we need, and many scoff that it has done anything at all. Nevertheless when Prime Minister John Howard refused to give “them” even the satisfaction of an apology that was seen as hurtful, as an obstacle to the way forward.

Words may be empty but giving or with-holding them has some power after all.

Perhaps it is that words are always as empty as containers, and we infuse them with contexts- with our identities and actions and intentions. Perhaps also while at times familiarity of words can obscure meaning, at times words can make meaning, call a reality into being. “I have called you by your name you are mine” with words we make each other part of our family, a person recognised and nurtured.

Perhaps it is not even always sin when familiar words simply wash over us, when we are at peace and connected in with our faith family rather than overthinking. I worked so hard as a child to overthink prayer, to avoid the blasphemy of praying without deep intention but I think I have missed one of the points of prayer/love/intimacy. In prayer we do not strive to be correct, we simply orient toward the other that is God (and that is God’s beloved) and we simply BE in love. We “waste time” with God.

Jesus as the “Word of God” did not always seek to be understood. Who has ever understood the loaves and the fishes, but thousands went away satisfied. What exactly happened at Cana? There was no wine and then there was. Not all words can be grasped in a logical way, some slip through like poetry, like the quiet breathing of a loved one, like a sunset.

Then there is this bit of wisdom. That took my fancy when I was in my mid-twenties (yeah back last century), although even then I had some quarrels with parts of it, and ever since then now and then I have made up my own meditations that attempt to make my praying of this prayer meaningful and intentional, to try to identify and avoid potential hypocrisy in it.

So here is a feminist version, not by any means finding all the potential pitfalls of meaning but one possible meditation on the prayer:

Don’t say “Our Father” as if God was only ever a father or were literally male. Don’t say “Our” unless you are ready to broaden the group of “we” to embrace whoever has been left out. Do not say “who are” if you will behave as if your own wealth and privilege is more important than the kindom of God. Do not say “in heaven” if by it you mean absent and not also here in my life, in me.

Don’t say “hallowed be your name” if you think other faiths cannot hallow God’s name. Do not say “hallowed” if you think religion is a set of rules and judgements rather than a living, holy place of encounter. Do not say “your” if your God has been recast in your own image…white? male? straight? cis? middle-class? educated? human? Do not say “name” if you are afraid to be named and known in return.

Or then again say it all, say it and learn to mean it. If God will parent you into this “heaven” way of being, if God is a sacred, named and known encounter then dare to say it all and be transformed!

Don’t say “thy kingdom come” as if God is an archaic form of oppressive government. Dare to demand and commit to “your kindom come”. Don’t say “your will be done” if you don’t have the courage to accept that God’s will is for a deeper, broader love for all…for the refugee, the single mother, the queer, the homeless, the welfare recipient and yes even for the right-wing bigot. Don’t say “your will be done” without accepting that God’s will, will radically transform you, and then transform you again! Don’t say “your will be done” without remembering that God’s will for you is joy and fulfilment. Say it! Trust it! Dance it!

Don’t say “on earth” without valuing food and water, music and cuddles and sex and conversation and your own bleeding, aging, beautiful body. Don’t say “on earth” without committing that all God’s children have access to the gifts of God on earth. Don’t say “on earth” without kissing the earth and calling her “mother” and loving her for she too is a child of God. God’s will on earth is love.

Don’t say ”as it is in heaven” without radical hope. Don’t say “as it is in heaven” if you are going to argue that it is impossible to strive for fairness, sustainability and equity. Do not say “as it is in heaven” if you think it does not matter that other people suffer. Do not mention heaven unless you are willing to hammer on its gates and demand its graces spill out through you. Yes I said “demand”, did you think prayers were for cowering and grovelling?

Don’t say “give us” without knowing that God can and does become involved in human life and history. Don’t say “give” without being prepared to share. Don’t say “give” without opening your hands and hearts to welcome and receive. Don’t say “us” if your circle is too small for the stranger and the orphan. Don’t say “us” if you cannot be kind to “them”. Don’t say “this day our daily bread” if you think this life does not matter and people can “wait until heaven”. Don’t say “this day” if you think it doesn’t really matter what you choose moment to moment. Don’t say “this day” if you will not work for a world that is still here tomorrow.

Don’t say “bread” if you mean a particular culture’s version of bread is the only one. Don’t say “bread” if your loaf is perfectly risen and soft and fluffy while your neighbour subsists on stale crumbs. Don’t say “bread” without being broken and shared. Don’t say “bread” without meaning rice, pasta, quinoa, mealie, chapatti, tortilla and every type of Jesus. Don’t say bread and skimp of the wine. Don’t turn away those who are ill or old or female, those who are Indigenous or foreign or have a different faith, those who are broken or on welfare or ill, those who are depressed or imprisoned or seem just plain lazy. Bread is for everyone. Break it!

Don’t say “forgive us” if you are afraid to forgive yourself. Don’t say “forgive us” unless you are truly sorry. Don’t be sorry without trying to understand. Don’t assume you understand without listening. Don’t say “forgive us” until you have committed to keep listening to the oppressed even when they begin to bore. Don’t understand without committing to change. But do be daring and start somewhere. Start somewhere and let it make you change. Bread and forgiveness go together in the prayer. Eat the daily bread of the work we have done, take it as gift. Commit to change as a response to the bread. Be broken in your privilege. Be broken in your brokenness. Be fed together- oppressor and oppressed.

Don’t say “trespasses” if you mean nitpicking about individual peccadilloes. Don’t say “trespasses” if you violate other people’s space or right to be themselves. Say “as we forgive” and learn to forgive. Say “as we forgive” and agree to being forgiven slowly and to have listening and recompense demanded of you. Say “as we forgive” and cry with relief when forgiveness is given freely. Say “as we forgive” and do not cast the first stone. Say “as we forgive” and learn to love and forgive yourself.

“Do not put us to the test” because life is a journey not a standardised test. “Do not put us to the test” because we want a holistic and respectful way of learning. “Do not put us to the test” because we want to love, not perform our way into your kindom. Do not say “deliver us from evil” if you want to be delivered primarily from other people- unbelievers and sinners. Do not say “deliver us from evil” if your own inability to love is above questioning. Do not say “deliver us…” if you still cling to easy answers and easy theologies. Do not say “evil” without striving to see the good in the world.

“Deliver us God from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. In your loveliness keep us free from sin (hatred?) and protect us from all anxiety (despair?) as we live in joyful hope the sacramental presence of your living Word (also known at one time as Jesus)”

What do we mean by saying “the kindom, power and glory are yours” how are they God’s? Where do they flow from to exist and belong to someone? What is it to us? Do we simply recognise this reality or help accomplish it? Should we be relieved or frightened at it? Are we perhaps the kindom, power and glory of God in our own lives? Not all of it, but the part we can access?

God transform my desires so that they actualise joy. Teach me to be radically in touch with myself in the familiar prayers, in the tradition, in the things I ask from you. Call me out of the escapism that harms me or my neighbour. I pray all these things as I make ready to eat with you and your creation, to be washed and fed, to be caught up in the spilling out of Eucharist in all things.

I come to your banquet as a typical middle-aged Latvian woman asking, ”what can I bring? how can I help?” and gossiping with you in the kitchen as we set the table. Let me be part of the trusted friends whose contribution is welcome.

I wrote this reflection and gave it at my church. I used the lectionary readings, which slightly differed from the ones used in the service, but it worked OK. I feel very supported and inspired by my faith community, thank God for them!

Without taking more time than usual I want to do two readings of today’s gospel. The first way of reading it, is not one that I like but it is one that seems to be invited by the context of these first and second readings, and by the way we know our church is structured. I will as usual read through a feminist lens, although it may seem like safety goggles in this case.

Women do not appear in the gospel reading. Jesus, takes three men with him only and they go up a high mountain to have a secret “inner circle” experience that others are not yet allowed to know about. This earmarks them as leaders of the future community after his death. While there he gets the seal of approval from two dead men from the patriarchal tradition. Even the voice of God stresses masculinity, uniqueness and power “this is my beloved son”.

Peter behaves quite logically. Upon seeing Jesus with Moses and Elijah, he humbly puts himself at the service of the more powerful alpha-male and offers to build some sort of semi-permanent structure to preserve the power and glory of this moment. Why should there be struggle and weakness and dissent when we can have certainty? Why not establish a religion based on rules and answers and infallibility? “It is good for us to be here”, it is good to be the powerful and the privileged and the inner circle, rather than being rebels against the system- rather than risking social ostracism and hardship and crucifixion. Given that their ministry has already meant blistered feet and hungry stomachs as well as being dogged by crowds and not allowed to rest, I don’t completely blame Peter for wanting to consolidate the shining, certain moment.

A voice from the cloud interrupts Peter, the vision fades and Jesus tells them to tell no one just yet.

Rereading, I want to insert my own “what ifs” into the story. What if this story is somehow relevant to me, who am not male and am not a leader within the church? I need to put aside my childhood baggage of Peter the stern first Pope and forbidding gatekeeper of Heaven, and shake the hand of the Peter I actually encounter in the gospel stories, to see if he lets me into the story a little more readily. Peter in gospel stories is actually a lot like me. He frequently gets things wrong. He is well-meaning, passionate, impulsive, at times his courage fails him and his vision is always at least one step behind Jesus. But he is persistent, reflexive, ready to be wrong and to bounce back and throw his enthusiasm in again. He follows Jesus with all the eagerness of a teenage girl with a crush (I hope that doesn’t offend anyone). He wants to impress Jesus with his commitment, his readiness to bounce into action, his willingness to see and know new things. Like anyone who really wants to impress their hero this makes him at times quite inept.

I feel this Peter can bring me up the mountain, part of a larger group of believers- men? women? As Judith outlined last week in her reflection the point is not to pick a gender but we are all children of God.

Peter’s motivation for offering to make tents may still be suspect- he may crave an easy road without the cross at the end of it, but don’t we all? He may want to have certainty and to feel that connection to tradition and to God that we all only feel in fleeting moments. A softer reading of Peter may allow him to be worrying not for himself only but for Jesus. He has spent time on the road, watching a beloved person who is utterly committed to his vision of better ways of being. He has watched people demand miracle after miracle from Jesus, and Jesus wear himself out and make enemies of the religious and secular powers of the day.

If he can make tents for his heroes- Jesus, Moses, Elijah- he can keep them near to nurture them and keep them safe. Peter can probably see the cross beginning to loom over Jesus’ fiery words. I imagine he could feel about Jesus, the way I feel letting my adult children out into the world (not that I can stop them). They bite off more than I think they can chew and face hurts and disappointments I wish I could cocoon them from.

Sadly for Peter, whether he wants the power of being an insider of an exclusive club or whether he wants to keep himself or his friend safe the moment fades. As the second reading reminds us, this isn’t some cleverly devised myth of “happily ever after”.

We also have this experience of life. There are bright, shining moments when we feel uniquely connected in with deeper realities and with the meaning of life itself. These moments may come in church, or through prayer, they may come in relationships or through experiencing the beauty of nature or art. Sometimes they come through our talents, when we feel really good about something we are doing or expressing or through having our work recognised by someone, especially someone we admire.

Those moments are fading and elusive, while every-day routines of paying bills and washing dishes take over. Nevertheless, the fading is not total. The memory of these moments infuses life to allow faith. We carry in our lives traces of meaning, the passion of knowing “it is good for us to be here”. We are reminded of that momentary joy in little things, in a beloved-one’s smile or words, in the flick of a dolphin’s tail, in the evocative soar of a piece of music, in the scent of the earth on our hands when weeding, in the taste of food shared, in the knowledge that today we have given something to God, achieved something for God, chosen the path of love and justice for God, noticed beauty that is God. Even in the greyest and most ordinary of moments there is always something of this, some echo of transfiguration.

I have spoken as if we are Peter, but through the sacraments we are invited also into being Jesus. Through our Eucharist, and through more mundane meals made from the miracle of earth and shared in love we take in mystery. The glory of Christ-Sophia cannot be preserved in a tent or a museum, as a reassurance to “us” or a sign to “them” that we are right. Instead it spills over in our opportunities to love our neighbour, and to walk gently and lovingly upon the earth itself.

We too are the beloved children of God. Let us know that God is well-pleased with our capacity to fulfil that identity. Let us sit with that a short while and then listen to each other.

Hi friends, this is not my usual blog post (though crossed fingers that will come some time before Sunday). This is something I am doing for charity.

If you live nearby this event please come along. If you can’t, then please consider sponsoring me. If you would rather give to a similar charity in your own town or country then please feel free to tell me about it in the comments.

If you don’t want to do any of those then ignore this one, and the next one will be as normal! I do realise people “give” in different ways and to different causes.

I have chosen to do this because I have a real horror of being cold and wet and hungry- every time I imagine being homeless I want to cry. I am lucky enough to have always had what I needed. I wish everyone would have at least the basics.

Recently I saw a sticker on the car. It was a Tyrannosaurus Rex eating the “Jesus fish” and it was supposed to be satirically atheist- sort of a triumph of a natural history view of the world (evolution) over faith (and creation). Seeing it I said “Do this in memory of me” and my son (14) laughed and immediately understood what I was seeing in it (which made me think perhaps I am not deluded).

I am seeing a powerful statement of the timelessness of Christ (Wisdom if you like) the idea that before human even existed there was a sacramental relationship between God and creation and also an eco-theological assertion about the place of ALL creation (not just humans) within a sacramental reality. In this symbol, Christ the fish (embodied in nature) gives Godself as food for the dinosaur. Food seems to be a universal need for all of life and for humans has become powerfully symbolic of well-being, nurture and connection. In the Eucharist we remember a meal Jesus shared and take into our bodies the actual, material reality of food- Jesus’ body.

The dinosaur in this picture asserts that evolution happened and is supposed to violently eat up our ability to have faith but the “Jesus fish” as a symbol that can function recognisably as food (think of all the feeding stories in the new testament that contain fish as part of the meal) can become a reinforcement of the stubborn tenacity of faith and the all-pervading grace and love of God. If we see “fishing” as a symbol of apostleship (see eg. Matt 4:19) then the symbol also has a dark side, this is also a text of terror about church leaders who consume the lives and wills of people. But I am seeing Jesus, the bread of life.

The Eucharistic prayer functions in the mass as a way of focusing us on Jesus as someone who enters our community as food- and on all the emotional and material things that food provides for us in our lives. I have found it to be boring and empty when I am too far from the altar, when there is too much pomp with the kneeling on sore knees while people swing incense and ring bells and use pages and pages and pages of words in a monotone but I have also found it real whenever I have had the privilege of setting the table, helping with the liturgy or at least standing around the altar like a family called to a meal.

The many prayers then is a remembering of the people present in a bodily sense, or present through the union of similar rememberings or absent to us except in love. The Jesus story becomes our story when we remember it, Jesus took the bread broke and shared it and told us to do the same. We become bread for the world by remembering the story as set down in the bible and in liturgy. “The people” traditionally get to join in with three lines only (the memorial acclamation) and an “Amen” at the end but I think this is wrong. Ideally we would share stories in many directions not just from the voice of authority- we would co-construct our tradition making links between the Jesus story and my story and the work of feeding.

Some contemporary liturgies do this by having various sections read by different people or groups which I think is a step in the right direction and possibly more manageable than the ideal I envision where we actually make meaning together by saying what we remember and how Eucharist has touched us this week. I find it a little bit over-the-top in traditional liturgies where the movement of the prayers goes from praying to various others into a “For ourselves too, we ask some share in the fellowship…” section. Jesus never said “Come to my table begging for inclusion and grovelling for crumbs” he said “I am the bread of life”. Jesus came to wash our feet and feed us – our role was simply to accept this and then pass the action on to the world. NOONE EVER has to grovel and try to adjust their worthiness to receive sacrament. I wish I had known this as a teenager when I was raped and excommunicated myself because I felt unworthy of Eucharist.

Good sheep may follow the good shepherd, but we at times bring our Tyrannosaurus rex selves stomping up to the table of grace. The Jesus fish says “take and eat”. Creation is invited forever into sacrament, into life. God looks at all that she has made and it is inherently good (Genesis 1:31)

This is a reflection i will deliver at church this morning. These are the readings .

“The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness”. May the Spirit bless this attempt to say something.

The parable of the weeds and the wheat seems to me to be a very relevant one for our time. We live in a society that seems intent on punishing people we deem weeds, without worrying too much about the incidental damage to any wheat in the equation. Many examples spring into my mind, but two in particular, because the newspapers whip up fear and hatred for these groups of people almost daily. The first is the fear of “terrorists” and the willingness to exclude and imprison all refugees in order to protect ourselves from some terrorists who may or may not be in the mix. The second is the assertion that many or most welfare recipients are cynically milking the system for money while neglecting their children. As someone who lives mainly among welfare recipients (and yes some of them are very troubled people, especially after years of hardship and broken hopes) I feel pain and despair at the hatred and judgement currently being directed against people who have the same desires as any of us, to give their children an education and to live life connected to other people.

It’s interesting that the gospel makes no mention of proportions of wheat to weeds. I’ve generally assumed that the weeds that contaminate the field are in the minority, that most of the field is wheat, but we do not know that. Either way it is not for us to try to judge, sanction or weed out the “bad people” in a group we are nurturing- we simply nurture and God does any sifting that is necessary- after the event. I wonder how many people who appear to be weeds, become wheat given enough nurture?

I wonder if I have started to look like wheat yet, for I surely was weed for most of my life.

Taking the same metaphor and bringing it closer in, each of us is also not purely wheat, or purely weeds but a complicated, impossible to unravel mix of both. Often we have been encouraged to be self-critical and try to “weed out” of ourselves any sins, impurities, smallness of heart or lack of faith. Often I despair that I work so hard to be a better person and all I get is compassion fatigue, or the mesmerising complexity of a world where I simply don’t know what is safe to believe or want or do.

What if I stop trying to “weed out” the parts of myself that I think are flawed or unacceptable and trust God that she has planted beautiful golden wheat in there, grains destined to become bread of life, along with Christ. God insists that there is something wholesome and good in me and you, something that can generously feed the world with beauty and truth. Sure there are weeds there too (once again we don’t know the specific proportion in each of us) but my job is to nurture the good and trust in it, and let God eventually sort the rest if it needs to be sorted. That’s not a cop out. If I believe in the wheat of myself then I will act out of the generosity of the swelling grain- I will know that I am not depleted when I love and trust other human beings and seek a gentler, more compassionate world.

The kindom of God is not to be found in the act of judging and weeding, of keeping out unworthy types and outsiders. It is the tiniest mustard seed of possibility inside each of us. Mustard when it grows is a tenacious bush, even a weed- it gets into everything and the same birds that nest in it scatter the seeds far and wide. When I see a person who appears to my limited and prejudiced view to be a weed, then perhaps all the understanding I can summon up within myself is also tiny and insignificant like a mustard seed.

With God’s grace in my life, my mustard seed version of God’s love can grow into a real involvement in the lives of my neighbours, a genuine commitment to their well-being without patronage…the seeds spread also into their life, people can be transformed. As with a mustard plant we have little control of the process- growing things requires a measure of faith and hope.

My sister is a baker so I love Jesus’ third metaphor. I also have many memories of my mother staying up all night to bake bread. With her sourdough she made her own yeast, leftover from the previous batch of bread. It looked flaky and unassuming. In the same way the small generosity we can have toward each other can be small and initially almost powerless- maybe only the power of recognition to begin with.

This recognition is grounded in God’s great recognition of the wheat within us, the growth toward loving-kindness. Small and unassuming like yeast it begins, touching the flat, basic wheat and water of another person’s life; thus it swells into loaves. The bread of life.

It would be easy to focus on what we as individuals or as a society ought to do better. There is a place for critical reflection and for seeking to improve how we relate. But perhaps the call today is a more difficult one. Perhaps we can sit and become aware of the wholesome wheat that we are- in some significant proportion, each of us within ourselves. Forget the weeds for now, forget how you think you could or should be better and be joyful to be God’s wheat for a hungry world. Try to feel the joy of this being and ripening.

Then, when you are ready, I invite you to briefly share your own perspectives with the people sitting nearby.

“Ask and the church will deny it of you, because it is not how we have always done things, seek and you will be told off for being out of your seat and off-task, knock and the door will be slammed in your face.” This is not how Matthew 7:7 originally went, but it feels like how it is trying to remain in relationship with”the church” hierarchy as a queer, ministry-bound catholic woman, and now even more so as a borderline coeliac.

I had decided, just today that given how many people I have been openly telling about my blog, it might be time to tone down the criticism and to try to focus on whatever positivity I can find within my faith…but I guess God let me know a long time ago that I was never going to be allowed to get comfortable and complacent within “the church” that the voice God called out of me was a fish-wife voice (read the prophets though, feminists are not God’s first fish wives nor even the most ranty). So I apologise for the negativity I really do…but I was thinking calm and half-baked thoughts about how to write about the next part of the mass (the Eucharistic prayer) all week when a woman at church drew all our attention to the latest silly rule made up by Rome.

It appears that when Jesus asked “Whatfatheramongyou,if hissonasks fora fish,will givehima snakeinstead?Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?…” (Luke 11: 11-12; see also Matt 7:9-10 where the question is about giving a stone instead of bread) he wasn;t reckoning with the callousness and lack of empathy of certain self-styled “fathers”.

In effect forcing a celiac to eat gluten (or you know, be excommunicated) is just that! I guess I am not a true celiac because I just try to take the smallest amount possible at communion time and live with the gut pain. Yes I get gut pain from gluten, like a stone in your tummy, or a scorpion stinging your insides. There are people more intolerant than me who can faint from gluten, from having it once. Most people I suppose wouldn’t die from one wafer, but it does add a disincentive to the habit of daily mass (which used to be a big thing for me when I was young). So that is the first problem with this teaching, the excusion (or torture) of people with Celiac disease.

This is compounded by a compassionless society that we currently live in, where people delight in trying to point out that differences in people are due to all sorts of psychologically motivated weakness, “lifestyle choices” and generally being a “special snowflake” and trying to debunk everyone else’s special needs while acting entitled around their own needs, wants and choices. Celiac sufferers can find it hard to be taken seriously by friends, family and people who sell food. The church has not caused this giant empathy vacuum (or at least not single-handedly) but surely if we read the words of Jesus we are supposed to be the antidote to it, the counter-cultural voice insistantly reminding that “actually I care”. For the church to side with the sneerers and shamers (in this case I think by omission rather than intent) defeats the purpose of even having a church. Sacrament is hollow when it is only for the privileged (see eg 1 Cor 11:22 and the background around that). God made disabled people, allergic people, yes church-Fathers even the queer people. Difference is part of the divine design, “In God’s own image” diverse and challenging (but if you think humans are too varied, try to get your head around parrots some time),

The second problem is that while it might seem reasonable to have a reductionist view of “bread” where it is always wheat and water (I question if the little circles they hand out at church are such a faithful or recognisable version of anything “bread”like in any case, and as a child was frankly delighted with the surrealism of it all) this binds us into a culturally chauvinist reading of the Last Supper where Jesus is excluding the vast millions of people on the planet for whom the staple is rice (or corn, or quinoa or anything non wheat-based).The bible in fact does not give us a recipe for the bread used at the last supper, it may well be reasonable to suppose it was made from wheat, but “bread” has not always and everywhere meant “wheat” my own mother used to make it out of rye and barley; my sister, a professional baker adds things like chia seeds or sunflower, or whatever in all the varieties of “bread” that people want for their meals- their suppers and picnics and date-nights and lunch-boxes. We buy loaves, rolls, flatbreads, buns made of oats, spelt, chickpeas, rice, tapioca, etc, etc etc. Mexican dinners get wrapped in bread made from corn. People in Asia see bread as strange and exotic as they team rice with ever meal (yes breakfast too).

Why do we need to limit what “bread” means other than out of a desire to limit people or exclude them. Did Jesus limit? Did he give strict prescriptions? He ate with tax collectors and prostitutes but we can’t even eat with Celiacs or Asians? Surely this is nonsense!

And that was the final point made by the (very articulate) woman at my church (please note the way I have teased out each point and the possible errors in my thinking are my own). That all this sternness over what can or can;t validly be called “bread” and this lack of understanding around how it is for some people (with real food intolerances, or from diverse cultural backgrounds) makes a laughingstock of the church. It gets harder for us to explain why we would want to be associated with it…which is fine if I am only worried about my vanity, my friends get to see me as a weirdo…I can live with it. But if there is actually something life-giving and possibly transformative within our tradition then surely we need to keep it as open and accessible as possible and avoid turning people off over trivialities!

I once again think of the huge and horrible scandal of abused children and how much harm has been done by the church’s REFUSAL to intervene in a serious matter- and then they get all upset over what recipe of wafer is being used. Clearly I am not a bishop or a cardinal but I fail to see the confusion here. Surely the life and well-being of children is a serious issue and the proper recipe for bread is a side-issue? Not the other way around. They make such a fuss over the right gender for priests and the right grain for bread and probably the right grapes for wine and yet the right treatment of human beings is something they are far too slow to speak or act upon. Why is that? And how does it look to the world? And how hurtful to be marginalised in so many ways- as a woman, as a queer person and now even as someone with a food intolerance (and in solidarity with Asian friends for whom “bread” is not what it is for a European/Australian like me).

Googling around the issue to try to double check that there really was such an edict from “Rome” I came across several stories of people working hard for many, many years to try to get around this rule by removing gluten from wheat (yes that is seen as more natural than making bread from something other than wheat). These recipes, which have taken over a decade in some cases to make successfully in a form that the Vatican allows, seem to have been developed by nuns.

So men make these unreasonable rules and women work harder than ever to ensure that the children are fed nevertheless. And who do we see as “ministers” of the sacraments and of God? There is a whole other feminist rant in that (as usual) division of labour but I am sure any reader who has got this far can see it for themselves.

I enjoy my habit of finishing with a prayer.

Loving God who created bodies- black, white, any colour, skin colour rainbow of browns and pinky-browns and tans. You created food- an abundance of food- grains of all kinds for bodies of all kinds, for stomachs of all kinds. You call us to break our “bread”, our everyday food and share it in memory of your body broken- you feed us body and soul to remind us to do the same. To take the grain, to make the bread, to labour and to love. To shape the meal to feed the needs of the body, to carry our celiac neighbour to safety. To bless wine and enjoy the complexity- the richness, the celebration, the friendship,

God you could have stamped us all out the same, as white round wafers are all the same but you chose to give us rainbow spirits in rainbow bodies- each one different, unique, needed to make the image whole. Harlequin God of shifting colours and differences bless us. Be our breads. Be our wines. Be the way we address our differences in love. Be the hand that offers health and acceptance with the bread.

We ask, we seek, we knock. We hunger and so do our brothers and sisters.

For more than crumbs, abundant God. For more than tokens on the margins. For more than a self-righteous ache in an irritated gut.

I was able to share this reflection/preaching at church this week. The readings are here. My wonderful community as usual helped me in myriad ways and I am left feeling extremely grateful to be part of it.

They call it “catholic guilt” that feeling that the whole world is on your shoulders, crushing you and that you are always a frivolous and questionable human being that should be doing more, sinning less, always loving, always giving, always more and more good. To me it sits easily with the second reading’s scorn for all things “flesh”. I know I eat too much, sleep too much, lust too much, waste time and get distracted too much. I can get paralysed in labyrinths of self-loathing.

Historically the weighty, worldly, inferior “flesh” has been equated with women and those of us who are women tend to have taken that on especially strongly, hypercriticising ourselves about everything we do or don’t do, even how we look. Our bodies seem to let us down at times, for a large chunk of our adult life they have a cycle of sensitivity and weariness with tears and bleeding which seems to schedule itself to appear especially at the times when we would have liked to seem most invincible. We have been expected to take up more than half of the burden of cooking and cleaning and child-raising all the tasks which bring us very much into our bodies and force us to deal with the realities of other people’s bodies.

Because of this, for me the idea that we need to “rise above” flesh and be all about spirit sounds like a very privileged and misleading claim. People who consider themselves “spiritual” still have bodies after all and someone has to prepare food for them and clean up after them. It seems to me more honest to stop pitting the spirit versus the body and to allow them to nurture each other- thus allowing every person to be both.

Carter Heyward in her book “Saving Jesus from those who are right” looks extensively at how we can find God through respectful, mutual relationships with others (human and otherwise) and within our embodied realities of life and love. I want to return to the second reading with Heyward’s assumption that my bodily, lived reality and relationships are where I encounter God.

We are not ONLY flesh. We are not ONLY limits and needs and mortalities. We are “Spirit”, something greater than an individual person or handed down tradition, greater than the group of “insiders”.

Spirit is radical connection, embodiment toward the whole- it is galaxies and stars and planets, blades of grass and tiny fish, children born into poverty and adults who want to be able to afford an education. Spirit in humans may look like art and literature, dance, hopes, visions and dreams, physical exertion simply for the glory of it and warm prickles of water washing our skin in the morning. It is giving. It is loving. It is reaching outside myself to include someone more in my circle of care. It is also hunger and thirst and need: the persistent call for greater justice.

But we (spiritual beings) are embodied. We need to be kind to our limited selves too. Jesus in the gospel is not inviting us into that constant nit-picking that I started with but offering us a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light.

We are called to become who we secretly want to be- more human, more authentic to the image of God we were made in- more compassionate and wise and filled with meaning NOT out of guilt, but out of the joy of living authentically. To do this, we need to let go of the fearfulness that God will ask more from us than we are capable of giving. Instead we may seek to find the desire in ourselves to give generously.

I struggle with this, not because I don’t believe it is there but because enthusiasm gives way to exhaustion and distraction and the effort of juggling too many different things at once… I have not yet found a truly, deeply AUTHENTIC way to live my vocation.

The hope lies in that we are yoked with Christ and with all who are yoked with Christ. We share the burden and hopefully pull more or less in the same direction- toward the liberation and life of all.

It is not “I” alone who must achieve my vocation we are called into the love of Jesus, our vocation is to be community and within it is rest, refreshment and the ability to share the load.

Let’s just sit for a moment with the invitation to an “easy” “light” load and to “rest”. How will our deepest longings and God’s deepest longings begin to actualise without us beating ourselves up all the time? How do we “learn from” this wise Word of God? How could we become?